


the boundary of his two bare arms

by innie



Series: Seven and the Ragged Tiger [1]
Category: Lucifer (TV)
Genre: Celestial Powers, Cunnilingus, F/M, Freckles, Gentle Caresses, Hair-pulling, One Partner Has More Experience, Shower Sex, Tender Sex, Vaginal Fingering, Vaginal Sex, banter in bed, celestial strength, heat - Freeform, unexpected tenderness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-18
Updated: 2020-10-18
Packaged: 2021-03-06 19:34:02
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,004
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26294206
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/innie/pseuds/innie
Summary: Ella seeks comfort after she brings down the real Whisper Killer.
Relationships: Ella Lopez/Lucifer Morningstar
Series: Seven and the Ragged Tiger [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2014660
Comments: 16
Kudos: 100
Collections: Yes Fest 2020





	the boundary of his two bare arms

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Corina (CorinaLannister)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/CorinaLannister/gifts).



> Spoilers through 5x08, and in this fic Chloe and Lucifer are not yet together.
> 
> My thanks to victoria_p (musesfool) for the awesome beta.
> 
> Title from Christopher Fry's _The Lady's Not for Burning_.

"Miss Lopez," he said, as gently as he knew how, aware that since she was crumpled on the ground he was looming over her in a way that must have looked far from comforting. "You have triumphed. He will never be able to hurt another woman again."

The way she raised those stricken eyes to his face made him curse his foolish tongue. He'd made such a bloody production of speaking only the truth, enough to have every one of the LAPD parsing his every utterance, and Miss Lopez's hurt brain — too swift to be denied — would have twisted his last sentence into an ourobouros of agony: _he will never hurt_ another _woman, because_ you _are still suffering from his onslaught._

She would be trying to use logic to shore herself up. She would be failing, flailing in the dark, not understanding that it was so-called logic that had betrayed her into downplaying her instincts and agreeing to take a chance on someone purporting to be what she'd been told she should want. 

He was going to carve out a special corner of Hell for those who suborned women into acting against their instincts so that they would be more _feminine_ , more _pliable_ , more _vulnerable_. God Himself hadn't been able to breed instinct out of these shivering, newborn, helpless creatures; he liked to think that it was his atavistic example — Dad's overreaction, His inability to tailor a punishment that fit his supposed crime — lurking in the unplumbed depths of their squishy brains that kept humans a little wary. Of course they screamed and cried as they were born.

He'd never had any such thing as instinct — Created only to obey and all that — but he had to reason swiftly and act now. Had _he_ been the one brutalized past the point of reason, Miss Lopez would have ministered to him with a powerful hug, so he raised her up and folded her in his arms, letting her sob out her pain and rage into his chest. Well, his torso, at any rate, for she was rather small. She had only ever treated him with kindness, and this embrace seemed like such inadequate recompense. He envied the Detective and Daniel then, for having so clear-cut a part to play in hauling such cretins off to face this world's attempt at dealing out justice.

"Darling," he said as her sobs tapered off, unsure if she could hear him over her own shaky gasps, then was assured that she could when she burrowed closer, evidently unable to keep herself from responding to the vibrations of his words passing from his chest to her cheek. "Darling girl," he said, wishing to help but unwilling to use his power on one who had been made to feel so powerless; he changed his tune for her. "Tell me, what do you need?"

*

Her eyes were still streaming tears, and Lucifer knew how tear ducts worked — he'd been a very willing and limber life model for Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni once he'd got over the man's wretched name, and an eager conspirator with the artist and the prior of Santo Spirito in acquiring and dissecting corpses — but this continuous flow alarmed him. The Detective had clumsily tried one day to educate him on the concept of catharsis — really, he'd heard it all from the Greek tragedians millennia before her birth — but Miss Lopez seemed not to be gaining any purgation or renewal from this unceasing welling up that had lasted through his cradling her in his arms, getting her in his car, and bringing her up to his home. She was locked so far inside the labyrinth of her own mind he could have flown them home and she wouldn't have been aware of any oddity.

Or so he thought until he bypassed the leather sofas clustered near the piano and put her in his bed, pleasingly firm and made up with exquisitely soft sheets. Against that wide silken expanse, she looked as small and perfectly formed as Kleopátra, who had learned the Egyptian language from his tongue. The queen had cried too, at the destruction that men wrought, and dried her eyes with an impatient hand, aided by his banked heat. Miss Lopez sat up, straightening her spine, and looked up at him with wet eyes. Her gaze, though direct, was empty.

"Hey, no, I . . . I don't want to . . . your thing with Chloe . . ." she said, voice rising and falling in waves though he heard every stuttered word.

"The Detective has nothing to do with this," he said, _wanting_ with a wave of emotion that surprised him for her to accept his small help, and unwilling to get into the tangles of determining whether he and the Detective were both ready to succumb to a relationship that might very well last the rest of her life. "I simply thought you required rest and that you would be unlikely to get it unless you knew you were being watched over by a friend." He did not bother to reiterate his identity, knowing she did not believe how powerful he truly was.

"Oh," she said, and dropped her eyes, her long lashes, weighed down by tears, starkly defined against the rising pink tide of her cheeks. "I thought . . . no, of course not."

"Miss Lopez," he said, "anything you want or need is on the table. Anything." It was his poor judgment that had brought them here, thinking she would want to give herself up to sleep. If she demanded to be taken to the expansive garage where he kept all of his American vehicles and let loose to hotwire the lot of them, he'd do it in a heartbeat; if she wanted to drink his top shelf dry, he'd pour the liquor himself.

"Even this?" she asked, and tore at her clothes, as frantic to shed them as he'd been to rid himself of his wings.

He did not know if it was a desire to be out of her mind, a wish to have his touch overwrite her murderous lover's, or simply a hunger sparked by their time at the nudist colony that could no longer be denied, but he found there was only one response he wanted to give. "Lovely girl," he said, wrapping his fingers around her hands, stilling them and working toward her dishabille with eager hands, "let me."

*

He should have been more careful, out of the Detective's sphere of influence, to keep his powers in check, but he was too intent on serving Miss Lopez to deny her anything. He uncovered all of her soft skin and considered how to ease her down, set her free of her frantic thoughts, and show her that what they did was his desire as well as hers and in no way a betrayal. He began to strip himself, only to have her deft fingers unfastening his buttons, careful as the quality of his apparel demanded, so he left her to it and took down the heavy fall of her hair. Freed from its high ponytail, it swirled around her slender form, painting dark slashes across the pale pink of her flesh. He threaded his fingers through its pleasing warmth, cupping her fragile skull in one palm. 

She'd got him naked from the waist down and was attempting to unfasten his cufflinks, but this was about her desire and he had more than enough practice at stripping with only one hand to make it quick and neat. Her head lolled back in his secure hold, eyes going heavy-lidded when she saw his upper half — he didn't play favorites with his body parts, but it was usually the big (and he meant _big_ ) reveal of his bottom half that made everyone he'd invited to his bed lick their lips in anticipation. But Miss Lopez's eyes were fixed instead on the shape of his upper half, what she could have easily deduced from his bespoke shirts and sleek waistcoats, and she smiled though her mouth trembled. He held still, naked as she, to learn what all of that meant.

"Your shoulders are freckled," she said, hushed as any confession, even ones made to him as desire bubbled up and spilled free, and reached up to remove her cross. She was still thinking of him as human then, as her _friend_ , and seeking his comfort even as he sought to give her every pleasure going; she could not know that the freckles on his shoulders were the marks of where the starlight he'd lit had kissed him, back in those early days that now seemed so distant and airless. The chain pooled in her small hand, striping the cross like lashes on a whipped back, and he took it from her gently and set it aside, wanting to kiss her for her consideration. He loved her, he realized: that was what the glory he felt whenever she brightened at the sight of him was, the triumph when he made her laugh, the ache when he thought of her seeking a connection among the unworthy.

"Let me care for you," he said, and tipped her chin up with a careful finger. Her dark eyes were wide when he bent down to kiss her mouth. Her lips were hesitant in a way he hadn't expected, given how she'd torn at her clothes, but as she swayed into him and wound her arms around his neck he scooped her up with one sure arm. Straightening, he carried her to the bath, flipping the shower on and hearing the perfect chime of the fall of water hitting the metal of the drain before he put her back against the one polished wall and let his free hand drag gently down the hewn stone of the abutting wall. She was so small — like Dr. Linda, the other tiny force for unalloyed good who loved him as if there were no danger in offering the self so freely — that she must spend all her days looking up, so he set himself lower, kneeling in front of her; his knees would not be damaged by the uneven stones laid out to mimic the arrangement under his favorite waterfall. He was still too tall like this, his mouth well above her navel, and so he placed each of his palms under one rosy sole and lifted her.

Her hands clutched at his hair, and he relished the tugs as he dipped his head and licked through curls to find iridescent slickness. She smelled ripe as a perfect fruit and tasted tart, puckering his mouth, and he was unable to slake his thirst even when drinking from her source. 

"Darling," he said again, the word reverberating in her cunt, and she howled like an injured animal, one hand at the back of his head pulling him closer still and the other scrabbling for some purchase against the slick wall and finally landing on his face. He spread his hands just a little, parting her thighs further to give himself more room, finally draping her knees on his shoulders when he realized that her legs were shaking too much for her to stay upright. Avid, he was _avid_ for her, for what he could do for her, to show her that she was loved.

*

He thumbed away the tears — good tears this time — on her cheeks and ran his hands through the wet masses of her hair. He'd always run hotter than a human and his threaded fingers were better than a flat iron; Miss Lopez was like him, with hair that had to be coaxed straight, and in the spirit of fellowship he left it curly as his touch dried it. Even after that sequence of orgasms that had crashed upon her at a rapid clip, she retained some measure of thought and frowned her confusion up at him. He kissed away the frown, felt the shape of her lips change to a smile beneath his, and was reminded once more of how bloody small she was when his hands met around her waist. 

She made a beautiful line against his spun-gold sheets, and the pleasure he took at looking at her — his _friend_ , of all the bloody miracles — was intensified by how her arms came up, seeking him, even before her spine hit the bed. She yearned beautifully but he had no intention of making her beg or even ask. She made a cradle of her body for him to rest his weight against, and he smoothed her tumbled hair back as he kissed her mouth tenderly. She had a way about her, Miss Lopez; he wasn't exactly tame, but he wanted very badly to cherish her, to fix in her mind the truth that she was worthy of as much love and care as she lavished on others.

Only she wasn't being pliant in any way other than the physical. She wrapped herself around him like she had no bones at all and came to rest on top of him, all while they were still joined at the mouth. His cursed face must have been broadcasting his confusion because she pulled back and cupped his heavy head in her clever hands. 

"Let me care for you," she said in a shot-silk voice, a solemn promise and a covenant of delight in one utterance. "Dude," she said — she was _made_ for California, Detroit roots be . . . set aside — "you just had a brush of your own with a killer. You were _paralyzed_ and made bait in a trap for Chloe and had to deal with the idea that she was the next victim. Not even the strongest man I know" — she ran her thumb over his eyebrow, a caress he'd never felt before and instantly wanted to feel again — "can just bounce back from all of that."

She was far too generous, Miss Lopez, a trait that he'd ceased warning her about, because he wasn't about to beat his head bloody against that particular wall, not when he was such an obvious beneficiary. But it seemed the way to make her happy was to allow reciprocity. He drew one skidding finger up her spine, against the grain of her downy skin, reveling in the pleased shiver of her shoulders and the liquid gush of her against his belly. She dropped down again, her spine one slinky curve that felt like home to both of his hands, and kissed him, no teasing nips or bites, just an open mouth against his, lost in abandon.

She was setting his nerve endings ablaze, and he was the lord of fire and light. 

Her hair pooled on and around his shoulders, tickling him, and her knees were bracketing his ribcage. He was reminded, abruptly, of how the most playful breezes would caress the length of him when he flew for the sheer pleasure of it. Pressing against her back to keep her close, he sat up, and her hands fell from his face to his shoulders.

Disoriented, she pulled her mouth free and dropped her eyes, only to smile with wicked glee. "Freckles," she murmured, trying and failing to cup his shoulders with her delicate hands.

"Hardly my chief charm," he said, the taste of her still in his mouth as he parted her curls and slid a finger inside her.

"Not the only reason to say I want this and I need you," she agreed, suddenly bashful, biting her lower lip. He tugged it free so he could bite it himself, and again he could feel a rush of wetness against his skin.

His finger was being sucked in by a force as strong as he'd ever known, and how extraordinary was it that any given human could be as powerful as the cosmos? That tug of her cunt made it feel like there was an insistent hook in his navel, pulling him into her. 

"I as well," he finally said, matching her gaze as she nodded at him.

There were words debossed into his bones — carved by the breath of God, who'd apparently got stuck in quite the rut with His fixation on ribs in particular — that she would never see but that she seemed to sense somehow, given the shapes he could feel her trembling fingertips drawing against his flesh as he pushed into her in infinitesimal increments. He wanted to take his time with her, wanted to take _her_ time despite how little of it she had left in her flickering mortal life; it was important to assert that her time should be spent exactly as she wanted it.

She was dewy with sweat by the time her body was flush against his, the two of them wrapped heedlessly around each other. 

"Lucifer," she said, nuzzling under his ear, as if she sought nothing better than this feeling of fullness that could be tipped into a buzzing lassitude or a screaming frenzy. "Such a good friend," she murmured into his skin.

"Such a good fuck," he returned, a little dizzy from the feeling of one he loved and would continue to love accepting him so readily.

"That too," she said, head tipping back as he kissed her throat and wound her hair into a thick rope around his hand, the better to tug at it and watch her toes curl.

Her gasps were echoed by her hands, clutching and caressing him by turns, and they found a rhythm that he'd assumed a mortal would not be able to keep up for long. Nor could he. The satisfaction of it was overwhelming.

*

"Such a good friend," she said again, slinging her bag across her torso so that the strap sat between her delectable breasts, now unfortunately covered up by layers of cheap, colorful clothing. She found her hair elastic next and pulled her hair into the high ponytail she most often wore.

"And?" He waited until she was done and fastened her necklace around her slender throat.

"That too," she said, and grinned.


End file.
